A prefectural governor has riled his diet by announcing that “If you’re too familiar with manga, you’ll lose the ability to read.”

He made the statement in response to proposals relating to anime and manga, rejecting them out of hand, going on to say “We have to think of the children’s education”, which caused something of a furore in the prefectural diet.

His remarks are widely interpreted as an insult directed against the PM for not giving him the funds he wanted to squander.

His bravura soon left him when confronted with throngs of reporters after the session: “I may have said that manga destroys literacy, but I meant nothing specific.” he recanted.

Rozen Aso, the Prime Minister so widely renowned for his much flaunted love of manga and courting of the Akiba demographic, has in recent months been the butt of many jokes for his repeated inability to correctly read a variety of kanji compound words.

Thus this remark is thought to be an ill concealed slight, as the governor is upset that PM’s “1 trillion yen to the regions” plan is “opaque”, perhaps in the sense that it doesn’t clearly lay down a large enough figure for him.

The governor is said to have (had) a reputation for prudent and discrete utterances, making this all the more surprising.

I think Aso’s unfamiliarity with obscure kanji compounds stems from his overseas university education. There’s very little pressure to really understand higher-level kanji if your higher education is taking place in America and England.